Ryker washed his hands and splashed cold water on his face. The bells were starting to fade, but when the restroom door opened and Mason rolled in, they chimed once more.
"What's going on?" Mason asked, his gaze serious.
"I just needed a minute," he said tersely.
"You never need a minute. You're always ready, even when the rest of us aren't."
"Not anymore. Things change. You know that better than anyone."
"I do. What's in your head, Ryker?"
"A lot of noise," he admitted. "It comes and goes. I never know what will trigger it."
"Are you getting help?"
"There's nothing to be done. It's not physiological."
"Then go to a shrink."
He shrugged. "Don't worry about it. You have your own problems."
"Doesn't mean I can't think about yours for a minute. I know you don't ask for help, but sometimes you have to take it when it's offered."
"I appreciate what you're saying, but I'm getting a handle on it. I'll be fine. I'm more concerned about you, Mason."
"You really think someone is coming after me?"
"There's a good possibility."
"Did you talk to Hank?"
"I did. We're supposed to meet up at seven tonight to talk further. You could come. It might be good for all of us to put our heads together."
"I don't think I can make it. I have another surgery tomorrow morning, and I have a lot of work to finish before then."
"You should make the time. This is important."
"So is my work. I need to hang on to this job."
"I understand. I just want you to know how serious this is."
"I'll see what I can do. I'll try."
It wasn't a promise, but it was as much as he was going to get. "All right," he said. "Do you see Hank much? You're not too far apart."
"Not really. He's busy with his life, and sometimes I don’t think he can stand looking at me in this wheelchair. He gets uncomfortable and awkward, and I don't need that shit. It was easier for him to be around me when I had my prosthesis on, when I looked normal, but I've had some problems with it, so I'm back in the chair until after my surgery."
Mason's words were pragmatic, but Ryker knew there was deep-buried pain beneath those words. He wasn't completely surprised that Hank was awkward around Mason now. Hank had always had trouble with people who showed a weakness. Even now, he surrounded himself with bodybuilders and gym rats. He was always about building up his physical body, but his mental strength had never been as strong, nor his emotional strength.
"You shouldn't be doing this surgery alone," he said.
"I've been alone for nine months."
"Maybe I should be there for this one."
"I don't need you to be there—not for the surgery anyway. If you want to be a friend again, I'm open to that. Or does seeing me make you feel guilty? I'm fairly certain that's why Hank can't spend more than five minutes with me. He sees me, and he sees failure. But I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was no one's fault."
"Someone put us in the wrong place at the wrong time."
"If they did, I don't believe it was deliberate. It was just bad intel."
He was surprised at Mason's words. "You're able to accept that?"
"What choice do we have? It happened. It's done. It's all about what we do next, right?"
"Right," he agreed, thinking ironically that Mason might be the healthiest one of them all.
"So, how did you hook up with Colonel Kane's daughter?" Mason asked.
"Savannah was at the funeral. She's friends with Abby."
"And she's an FBI agent?"
"Yes."
Mason smiled. "Not your usual kind of woman. Actually, that's not true. You were always a sucker for a hot blonde. But they didn't usually have serious jobs." He paused. "Are you sure you want to mess around with Kane's daughter?"
"I don't care what he thinks. I was never a fan of his. And if I want to mess around with her, that's between us."
"And you do want to," Mason said with a grin.
"I do," he admitted. "But I need to get my head on straight."
"I don't know about that. Sometimes women like a little crazy." Mason pulled out his phone as it began to vibrate.
"Do you need to get that?"
"I'll return the call after I take you and Savannah back to the lobby."
"I know you have a lot of security here at work, but we need to look at the situation at your home."
"My townhouse is very secure. What about you? Are you still living on your boat?"
"Yes, in Chesapeake Beach."
"I can't believe you became a fisherman."
"It's a living."
"What do you think is really going on with your ears?"
"I don't know. I feel like my brain is trying to tell me something, but I have no idea what it is."
He opened the restroom door for Mason and then followed him back into his office. Savannah was standing by the window, but he had a feeling she'd been snooping while they were gone.
"Everything okay?" she asked, with a raised eyebrow.
"Yes," he said.
"It was nice to meet you," Mason told Savannah. "I have to get on with some work, so I'll show you out."
"Of course."
They followed Mason out to the lobby. He shook his friend's hand, and said, "Try to make it tonight."
"I will," Mason promised. "Until then, be careful, Ryker. If you're right about all this, then you're at risk, too."
"I'm very aware of that."
"Good-bye, Mason," Savannah said. "It sounds like I'll see you later."
"I hope so," he replied.
As Mason headed back into the elevator, they walked out to the car. He slid behind the wheel. The bells were gone, and hopefully they'd stay that way.
"What happened in the restroom?" Savannah asked. "Did you get more information from Mason?"
"Not really. He said Hank has trouble looking at his missing leg. I got the feeling they're not really friends anymore, either. He wanted to beg off from meeting us tonight, but I think I convinced him to come. However, he has another surgery tomorrow, and I guess he has a lot of work to do before then. He said he can't afford to jeopardize his job."
"Well, I hope he can make it. I feel like the three of you need to talk about the past. Maybe you each remember something from that last mission that the other does not."
"It's certainly possible." He started the car, but he wasn't sure where they should go. "What now? It's one twenty. We have hours before we meet Hank at seven."
"I don't know. What are you thinking?"
He didn't want to just drive around the city or go to a coffeehouse where there would be people and noise. "Why don't we go to my boat? It's about an hour's drive from here. We can be there by two thirty and spend a few hours on the bay before we have to head back."
"It's a lot of driving, but I'd like to see where you live."
Her words made him wish he'd made any other suggestion but that one. Taking Savannah to his boat was probably a really bad idea. He would only be bringing her deeper into his life. But wasn't she already there?
"Ryker?"
He met her questioning gaze. "Are you going to ask me if I'm all right?"
"I wouldn't dare. But I did want to ask you what triggered you today. What made the bells ring?"
"They started chiming when I first saw Mason, but they were soft and bearable. When he told me that we were only alive because I told them to abort the mission, the bells went crazy."
"Why?"
"I think it was because I don't remember telling them to abort the mission." He paused, giving her a troubled look. "If I don't remember that, what the hell else don't I remember?"
Chapter Sixteen
Savannah thought about Ryker's question as he drove out of the lot. "Maybe that's it," she said. "The bells are your brain's way of trying to get you to remember something. Let's think about the recen
t triggers."
"They happen all the time. There's no pattern."
"Let's just see. When we met at the funeral, you swung around like I was going to attack you, like you were about to snap my neck." She saw his profile harden. "You were hearing something then, right?"
"There was an annoying rumbling going on but it wasn't a full-blown attack. I think it was seeing James Lofgren and Colonel Vance in their uniforms that started the bells. They took me back in time."
"That's understandable. Did the bells get louder when you were on the patio speaking to Todd?"
"No. They actually went away when I started talking to Todd. Or maybe I was just distracted. The next attack came after I got out of the river. The rushing water suddenly seemed so loud, like it was going to overwhelm me."
"You were yelling when I showed up."
"I do that sometimes. I don't know what the trigger was then—probably just fear for Todd."
"And the next time the bells came was with the clock at Todd's house."
"Clocks always bother me, even ones that don't chime. If I hear any kind of a tick, it sounds like an explosion in my head. I don't know where you're going with this, Savannah. I told you, there's no pattern."
"I still think there are clues in the triggers. There have to be."
"Why? Sometimes people are just crazy. They hear voices in their head. I hear bells."
She frowned, knowing she was annoying him by stubbornly clinging to her theory, but she couldn't shake the feeling they were missing something. "Let's think about the last attack. It came because you didn't remember telling your team to abort the mission. That makes me think your subconscious is trying to tell you something."
"I don't know," he said wearily. "Can we stop talking about the bells?"
"All right." While she might agree to stop talking about them, she was not going to stop thinking about them.
"Did you snoop around Mason's office while he was with me?" Ryker asked, changing the subject.
"Yes. There was a lot of paperwork: test results, engineering diagrams, inventory, that kind of thing." As Ryker glanced in the rearview mirror, she realized she should probably be paying better attention to their surroundings, to the other cars on the road. "Is someone following us?"
"I haven't noticed anything."
For the next few minutes, she kept a close eye on the sideview mirror, but the flow of traffic seemed normal. Ryker changed lanes a few times. She didn't notice anyone following suit. As they got farther away from DC, she said, "So, how did you decide to live on the Chesapeake Bay?"
"We used to go there when I was a kid. My uncle had a house on the Maryland side. Every summer, we'd spend a few weeks there, and I always liked it."
"Does your uncle still live there?"
"No, he sold the house a while back."
"Too bad. I would have liked to meet someone from your family. You've already met my father and my cousin. It's not fair."
"Life isn't fair," he said lightly.
"Thanks. I'll make sure to embroider that on my pillow, so I don't forget."
He grinned. "There's no way you embroider."
"I've done some embroidery and I have other sewing skills as well. They're a little rusty now, but when I first started on the pageant circuit, my aunt didn't have a lot of money, so we had to sew our outfits. Eventually, our homemade wear didn't cut it, but a boutique in Ridgeview sponsored Josie and me for a few pageants and paid for our clothes. In exchange, I'd sometimes model for them on the weekends when we weren't competing."
"Was sewing your competition talent?"
"Definitely not. I was a singer. I was pretty good. Not recording label good, but I could hold a tune."
"I think you're being modest."
"Not really. And none of that stuff ever mattered to me. The only thing I liked about the pageant circuit was feeling like I belonged somewhere."
"You found your tribe."
"I thought I had, but then the backstabbing and jealousy drove that good feeling away, and I had to keep looking. It wasn't until I got to Quantico that I really found a group of people I could trust."
"Tell me about your team."
"Flynn MacKenzie is the head of the task force. He's half-American, half-Brit, has a dry sense of humor and reckless streak. As I mentioned before, he ran our training team at Quantico, which included myself, Beck, Caitlyn, Jax and Lucas. All of us are now on Flynn's task force, and we're joined by three of the members from a rival team at Quantico, Wyatt, Bree and Diego. The other two are still working in the FBI. Damon leads the office in LA and Parisa Maxwell, is assigned to the DC office. Flynn actually suggested I look up Parisa if I need some help in this part of the country."
"It's interesting that you've all stayed together since Quantico."
"We were actually spread out the first three years, but the last year and a half we've found our way back onto the same team. Like going through ranger training, you form a bond within your class, and it was the same at Quantico. A lot of the assignments were meant to tear you down, strip you bare, show you what your vulnerabilities were as an agent so that your weaknesses wouldn't defeat you. We all heard very personal and private information about each other, and I think it gave us a trust that we might not have had otherwise."
"And now you're in California. What's that like?"
"Fabulous," she said with a laugh. "The weather is awesome. I have an apartment near the beach. I sometimes bike to work, although probably not as often as I should. It's nice to be in a big, diverse area, with lots of cultures, great restaurants, and amazing entertainment."
"LA is nothing like Dobbs."
"I like Dobbs, but the small town never fit me. And being so close to Fort Benning and my father, it was not a place I was going to stay. I don't know if I'll be in LA forever, but it suits me now. I like the beach."
"So do I. It's just a different kind of beach where I live."
"You already seem more relaxed," she said. "It's like you're leaving your stress behind with each roll of the wheel."
"I am. I can breathe again."
"What do you do for fun, Ryker?"
"Fun?" he echoed. "You don't think fishing is fun?"
"It's a little slow for me. I would think it would be that way for you, too."
"I needed to slow down, and it's easy to keep people quiet so they don't scare the fish."
"Do you go into town on the weekends? Do you have a local bar you hang out at? Any friends? Any women?"
He flung her a smile. "Ah, you want to know about the women. Way to bury the leading question at the end."
She made a face at him. "I'm a little curious."
"There haven't been a lot of women in my life the last several months. I took someone out about six weeks ago, thinking it was time to get back into action, but she was honestly boring as hell. All she could talk about was the drama in her friends' group. Ashley slept with Kenzie's boyfriend, and Melissa posted an unflattering photo on social media of Karen, and that started a huge fight," he said mockingly.
"They sound like a fun group."
"It was not a fun conversation. The only thing I was enjoying was my steak. And then my date's phone went off. It was loud, and it rang, and it rang, because she couldn't find it in her enormous bag, which she proceeded to unpack on the table. There were tampons rolling around by the bread and butter."
She laughed at his words. "That must have been uncomfortable."
"It gets better. It was her ex-boyfriend, and she proceeded to talk to him at the table."
"And your bells weren't ringing then?"
"Oh, yeah, they started going big-time. I ended up throwing a hundred-dollar bill on the table and getting out of there. I'm not sure she noticed I left. She was yelling at Ron about telling Karen all their problems."
"Where did you meet her?"
"At the gym. I was working on rehabbing my knee, and she used to do the elliptical at the same time. I was getting a little tired of my own company. I
thought I could try a dinner out. I picked a quiet restaurant. I wasn't counting on her being the noise. And I certainly didn't realize her personality would suck so much. After that, I decided to go back to being on my own."
"Isn't that a little lonely?"
"At times, but I'm happy on the water. You'll see."
She was already beginning to see. His breath came easier the closer they got to the coast. He was starting to look more like the irresistibly sexy man who had first swept her off her feet. It was going to take some work to remember that they weren't on a date. But she had to remember. Both their lives could depend on it.
Chapter Seventeen
Chesapeake Bay was a large estuary that stretched from Maryland to Virginia and was fed by hundreds of rivers and creeks. Chesapeake Beach, Maryland was only forty-five minutes from DC, but felt like a million miles away. It was a small, charming town with bay views at every turn, as well as seafood cafés touting everything from Maryland blue crabs to fresh-caught rockfish, blue fish and oysters. For a fisherman, it was a good place to set up shop.
Ryker parked at the marina and gave her a happy smile as they got out of the car. "Are you hungry? We can grab some chowder to go over there." He tipped his head to a small shack called Chowder Heaven. "It's good."
"I can smell it from here," she said, following him across the parking lot and into the café.
An older woman gave Ryker a questioning smile as they stepped up to the small counter. "Where have you been?"
"Had to go out of town."
"Well I'm glad you're back. Thought I'd lost my best customer."
"Not a chance. We'll take two large chowders with a loaf of bread."
"You got it."
"Do you want anything else, Savannah? I probably should have let you order for yourself."
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